


Mercury

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Memory Magic, and hand-holding, cleansing the genius, cold cases, old crimes, using your gifts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-25
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:41:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dead want, Sherlock; they always do.   </p>
<p>Sometimes old acts of violence call out for deduction.<br/>He can't help it.<br/>Murder outs like mercury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercury

**Author's Note:**

> Alchemical for wiggleofjudas.
> 
> Elliptical for [ PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/works).

_“The fluid chaotic state was often equaled with mercury. Thus alchemical mercury was frequently considered the prima materia.”—Jeffrey Raff, The Alchemical Imagination_

  
  
The world is a crime scene.  
  
The world is on fire.  
  
Two hawks falling.  
  
Bone exposed.  
  
Cacophony.  
  
Gunfire.  
  
No. Stop.  
  
“Sherlock,” says John.

He doesn't want to go back, sift through the layers. Pick, archaeologist of the macabre, through wreckage and rubble, each piece scored by an act of violence.

It's like trying to pick up mercury. Which he can do, has done.

But it’s different, different from what you can taste and touch and smell, those things he loves.  
  
“Sherlock, “John says, “can you hear me?”  
  
 _Yes, John, I can always hear you, have been hearing since before I knew you, you …_

No.

John's fingers on his neck, beneath his eyes, on his temples. The bedrock of the sofa somewhere, the planed edge of an orbital bone.

Can you hear me.

Oh _._  
  
 _Oh_.  It's the first time John’s seen it, witnessed him sifting through the old scenes, which are not in the palace but somewhere else, somewhere he hasn’t mapped, that sends him the spectral puzzles that want his gifts.  
  
He's never wanted to give them but John makes him want.  
  
What, to be better?  
  
To be more.  
  
No.

*****

Don't tell me about the unsolved ones.  
  
But they're all unsolved.  Look at all this memorial --murder, arson, murder, explosion. The dead want, Sherlock; they always do.   

You can snatch them back out of the earth, out of the ether.

While the coppers are biding their time down at the you-solve-it.

While time runs on.

Yes, he knows.

*****

An imploded room, melted. A hand beneath.

What happened here.

Fingerprints, cinnabar signature of the burn. The switch, the flash, the flare, the ash. The neighborhood gone pyrotech. A new monument in a new place, where neighbours leave heaps of bloodlet roses, the arterial sentiment of mourning.  

Oh.

He could wash this firefield clean. Thinks France, the husband, fusing his tracks with flame. Clean and beautiful as igneous glass.

Golden.

Don't tell me about the unsolved ones.

But they're all unsolved, here.

Yes, he knows.

*****

He blinks. Comes back.

“Jesus, Sherlock, was that a seizure?”

 John wants to hold him still, shine a light.

“Here,” he says, “stop.”  Let's John see his pupils, points of night.  Would let him see the brainwaves if he could.

He’s never spoken them before, these old solutions.  

He’s never spoken them before.

Lestrade’s face when he tells it, hands him the answer to this cold thing.

If he does.

*****

The sofa, its soft spine, the flannel John’s got to his face.

“I’m fine,” he says.

It’s not an affliction.

It’s the opposite of empathy, John; it brings reason to the past. How can I make you see.

Murder outs like mercury. Places licked, poisoned, tainted, true to themselves.

A cottage. An alley. The back of a restaurant. The places answers never found gleam round the edges. A  wire buried in sand. Blood on a mica-spiked pavement. They’ll never be the same,these places, but logic washes them clean. You can’t always stitch it, bless it, lay on the hands; you’ve got to bring the deduction to it.

Like a light, John; like a light.

Who better than you to see that past isn’t really past. It'll be the present soon. It's the future. Logic is like that, like you; relentless, true. Gleaming, relentless, bright. Defiant of time but not order; true.

How can I make you understand.

“Oh,” says John, “I might.”

Silver slip of a thing, the first matter. Silver slip of a thing, his heart, almost forgotten, a moon-sliver between.

Something outshines violence but he doesn’t know it yet.

How can I make you understand; you understand.

“Make me then,” says John, takes his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> “…the alchemical drama consisted of the death of the original substance, which resulted in its reduction to a primal state.”—Raff
> 
> “ [Traumascapes] are a distinct category of place, transformed physically and psychically by suffering, part of a scar tissue that now stretches across the world.”—M. Tumarkin


End file.
